Archive for April, 2008

Mark this one down on the calendars.

Apparently back a while ago, during a WoWInsider podcast, an incorrect web address was given to Bellwether’s blog, 4 Haelz. Right now, it’s located on Blogger instead of being self-hosted at a domain of her choosing. Later it was found out that a lovely (that’s sarcasm there, folks) domain name camper had snatched up the name. The intrepid Leafshine, however, loathes such critters, and being the “wise in the ways of teh internetz” tree that he is, went off, set up an alert for when it might get released, and waited. Patience pays off, cos today he happily told Bell, as well as the rest of the Blog Azeroth chat room, that he had just purchased 4haelz.com and was redirecting it to point at her blog.

That’s when it happened.

Took her a good 4 minutes to come back after that. ::giggling:: Congrats Bell, and yey Leafy for being so sneaky.

One thing that I haven’t written about is a change that happened recently. Due to a sudden influx for Real Life vacations, moves, midterms, new jobs, illnesses, as well as good ol’ burnout, the guild got hit hard for getting a full group of 5 people online to do 25 man content. The officers all talked then gave the guild a heads up that we were going to hold off on raiding til further notice. There was just too much going on in everyone’s lives for us to actually make any progress on 25 man content, and it wasn’t fair to those that came out week after week to keep putting other things on hold, only to find we would have to cancel that night’s raid because we lacked people.

Pretty much, the whole guild agreed this was a good idea. I think everyone’s been getting frustrated at the brick wall we seem to have hit in progression. There an ebb and flow to MMOs: you’re either making progression or you’re not. You losing members or you’re not. And a lot of times, we see that those two flow hand in hand. As soon as a guild stops raiding, there are some that feel they have to move on to guilds that are still raiding. For our guild, I don’t think we’d hold it against them.

I know that I’m actually happy about the no raids other than the guild members throwing together Kara runs or 5man content. See, I’m about to do a Big Thing: a “life reboot”. I’m quitting my current job as a graphic designer, moving two states away (lucky Boyfriend, he gets to not fully unpack, then pack up what he didunpack and move all over again in less than two months), and starting a new life as an art store/teacher resource/bookstore manager for a brand new store opening in a town I’ve never lived in, only visited. I’d already known I’d have to put raiding on hold til the move was done and we were settled, but this way, I don’t feel guilty for not being there to help and (I’ll admit it) jealous at the Phat Lewt others are getting.

Of course, knowing my luck, they’ll start raids back up two nights before we leave Atlanta. :;sigh::

So what do the non-raiding folk do? For my part, it’s heroics, Kara on those nights people have it and I get picked, rep grinds, dailies (oh god lots of dailies), and… well… yeah. Oh and alts. Don’t forget about alts. Now I have the alts on my main server, and then there’s the ones on the About Last Night’s server. And then there’s the shiny PS3 that keeps singing it’s siren song at me from downstairs. Hmm, maybe I do have quite a bit to do.

(Bonus points to anyone who figures out where I bastardized my post title from.)

Don’t mind me. I’m vanishing again for the weekend. But I have a good reason this time. No, I’m not going out of town. The Boyfriend is moving in this weekend, so I have a feeling a lot of time is going to be spent dealing with fitting his stuff into the house. Oh and some house projects I had waiting on him.

What? Why are you people grinning like that? Where’s that weird music coming from? Is that from the 70’s?! Quit that! Jeez people, get yer minds out of the gutter! >.>

Like I said earlier in the week, reputation grinds are the bane of my existence. I just get too easily distracted and want to go do something “fun”. Sometimes though I manage to buckle down and plow through a set amount of grinding and just get it done. Don’t bother talking to me while I’m doing it, cos I’m oblivious to everything else. It’s how I made it through the Netherwing grind this past weekend: purely from gritting my teeth and saying “no, dammit, I’m finishing this TONIGHT!”

Then there are the rep grinds that I don’t even realize are happening. Violet Eye from Karazhan would be that kind of grind. I mean, yeah, my brain realized that there was grinding going on, that I was getting reputation from killing all these mobs. But it’s not til the green flash of light goes off that I realized that “Hey! I’ve been getting rep for the past two hours! Sweet!” I like those grinds.

I’ve found that the Shattered Sun Offensive is a similar rep grind for me. No, I still haven’t set foot into Magister’s Terrace, either the 5 man or 25 man versions. The only rep I’ve gotten has been from doing the dailies which I haven’t been doing daily. More like every 3 or 4 days. Maybe. Yet yesterday I still managed to hit Revered with SSO and pick up a new sword from the rep rewards for Siana. I suppose that once I get Siana Exalted, I might as well start doing them on the mage again. So I’m slow at dailies. Sue me. But I just can’t sit there for 2 hours and do them all, then do it all over again on another character. It would make my brain pop.

But I still have a list of reps that I want to grind out for Siana. I want to get a Talbuk for her. I want Exalted from the Consortium. I still need that last bit of Honor Hold rep to get Exalted. And so on. Will I get them done? Hopefully. And when I get them done, maybe I can go back and finish getting all the Alliance racial faction up. Noooo I’m not slow at all. Why do you ask? >.>

it was a nice quiet weekend for me. Friday night, I did nothing. Storms came through and while a few booms of thunder did make me wonder if I should power down, it was the flickering of the lights that made me log off. About 15 minutes after I’d powered down and was in bed reading, the power went out. Early night!

Saturday was fits and starts. I got power back finally, then it was off to do a few dailies before saying hell with it and mucking about on the mage for a while. Eventually a Kara run was organized and we went trooping off to go pwn undead things. Happily, they let me take my mage. Granted, Sia could use the badges, but my poor mage is not as nicely geared as she could be. I blame myself for being horribly busy (and a little lazy) in not getting her geared up. But now that I don’t have the “GAH Must grind money GAH!” thing going on Sia, I can concentrate a bit more on the mage. I did manage to pick up the Uni-Mind Headdess, as well as get the exalted Violet Eye Archmage rep ring. A little bit better in the gear, even tho I need to work on her more.

Sunday evening was time for the About Last Night group run. Due to scheduling conflicts, two members couldn’t make it, so the other three of us made Taurens and had fun decimating the wildlife. Little things like all of us dinging at the same time (and me falling over giggling each time) and me smacking every plainstrider from the bristleboars to the beginning Tauren camp, while the other two finished them off as they followed me, meant an highly entertaining evening for me and a great way to end the weekend.

Tonight, I get to take a long hard look at the mage and figure out what to do with her. I have a feeling a respec is coming, along with a bunch of heroics. ::sigh::

He said it. Fimlys said i couldn’t prove it, but he said it!

A lot of my friends can tell you I hate rep grinds.

No, wait, I loathe rep grinds. I get bored, start to get really distracted, and pretty soon I wander off in disgust from the whole thing. This is why Siana doesn’t have the original 4 Alliance races, Argent Dawn, Cenarion Circle or a thousand other old world reps at exalted. Hell, I’m lucky I have some of them at revered.

So when Blizz made all those factions in Outlands, complete with keys to buy and really really REALLY nice patterns and other goodies at various levels of reputation, I sighed and started to buckle down on getting rep for them. I was really pleased to see the faction start to climb, since it seemed like everything had faction attached to it: quests, mobs, items the mobs dropped. Perfect for the easily distractable like myself. Granted I still don’t like rep grinding. I lust after the Kurenai mounts, but have yet to grind my way to one. I still need to go grind my way through some Consortium rep. But it’s not heavily pressing on me. But the important ones, the ones for keys, those I got up. Then I got up the rep to use the Marks of the Illidari. So I do rep grind. I just bitch and moan then get distracted.

Once The Boyfriend surprised me by getting the rest of my epic flying mount, I knew I’d have to deal with the Netherwing rep grind. At least it was all in the form of quests, so I didn’t feel like I was just mindlessly killing for no reason. There was a purpose! Yes! Even if the drop rates on some of them suck (Fel Glands, you suck). But last night, I got to see something I hadn’t seen before. I got to see Illidan, at least in projection form. And right after that, I had to go see a man about a dragon.

My kitty mount is Kenshin (long running joke). My regular gryphon was Yuki (it was white, and Yuki means “snow”). The epic flappy was Kyo (another joke, one involving the manga Fruits Basket and the previously named Yuki). So now, I have Mizu. No anime connection this time (at least that I know of). This one is just Japanese for “water”. What? He’s blue! It made sense at the time! Just cos I only had 4 hours of sleep then as soon as I got him I went and passed out… :;sigh:: My dragon, my name, so nyah!

Tonight? I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m sure something will come up. Who knows, I might start working on Kurenai faction again. Mmmm Cobalt Talbuk…

Wow, okay then! I know I’ve been a bit sporadic lately, but I blame that on real life. >.> On the plus side, my new floors look awesome. (And yes, for the morbidly curious, I will post pics at some point.)

I’ve made some nice personal WoW progress, actually getting dailies done (shock!), helping with the SSO faction, and getting closer on getting some other factions to exalted. I even had some time to get some SSO dailies done on my mage, which was a REAL shock to me. Raiding has been a bit slow recently, as we have quite a few people away on vacation, personal time off, or dealing with the last few weeks of school. But last night, we tried something crazy. Really crazy.

We tried to kill Doom Lord Kazzak.

Yeah we failed spectacularly, but I don’t think anyone really expected us to take him down. What we did have was a great time being silly and making a group effort at something none of us were anticipating doing when we all logged in. So what if we didn’t kill him. We had fun, and that’s what this is all ultimately about.

All that said, I can’t wait til we get more people and higher DPS and we go kick his tail around til he begs for mercy. ::evil grin::

In real life, I’ve been preparing a house to sell. Yeah I know, crappy timing with the market being what it is, but I have a nice job change waiting for me in another state 5 hours away. That kinda necessitates selling my house. It’s also becoming spring where I live, which means Spring Cleaning in all it’s insane glory. So I’ve been cleaning out the house of old things I don’t want/use, visiting home improvement stores practically daily, and talking to installation people about appointments to come to the house. It’s more than a little hectic over here.

I’ve found that the “change everything!” mindset has invaded my WoW-space as well. In my collection of alts, I had a human rogue named Duvesa, that I’d gotten to level 57. She was my first major alt, and until I got off my butt and leveled my mage up, she was my highest level alt for the longest time. However, she was permanently stuck at 57. Why? I just couldn’t get into her anymore. I’d loved playing her, but somewhere along the way, I fell out of love. It just wasn’t fun for me any more. I could not find anything that made me interested in playing her anymore. So yesterday, after not playing her (other than hopping onto her and unlocking a low level lockbox for a friend) for almost 2 years, I sold all of her equipment and items, mailed the proceeds to my bank toon, and deleted Duvesa.

Did it hurt? A little. But I’d found myself with no connection at all to her, and was starting to hate the fact she was in the second slot on my list, right behind Siana. Why have her there if I was never going to play her? So I deleted her and once the faint pangs of character deletion were over, it felt as if a weight had been lifted. To celebrate, I did the next obvious thing: I deleted another character. This time it was a Night Elf warrior, Ravaria, that I’d had wandering around. Only level 27, but she’d been a NE priest, a human pally, and then a NE warrior before getting deleted yet one more time. That name is one that I’ve had in previous MMOs and I have sentimental attachments to it, so I created a placeholder character with it. Will I ever play it? Who knows.

So after deleting two characters, I decided since the house feels weird with all the new paint and what not going up, I needed to change up Siana a little. So I did something that made several friends fall over into shock: I respec’d. Right now, she’s the “standard” 41/20 BM spec after being heavy MM spec (my usual choice). I raided last night with it and said I’d give it a couple more days of playing around with it. But once the time is over, I’ll be respec’ing again, this time to one of the MM/SV builds.

Why am I doing this? I’m trying to shake my mind out of any hunter ruts it’s gotten itself into. Specs are always a polarizing element in WoW, with this build or that build being held up as the Holy Grail for whatever your attempting to do, whether it’s PvP, leveling or raiding. But it’s not that simple. There’s not really one “perfect” build for each class/situation. There’s always something that affects the end result: latency, gear, random chaos, and most importantly, the person actually playing the character. It’s that human element that makes two identically geared, identically spec’d hunters have different DPS. It’s what each person brings to the table in personal experience and gaming style that affects the end results.

So I’m playing with specs, rediscovering what does and doesn’t work for me, and having a grand time doing it. I have a feeling I’ll be going back to my usual spec, but it’s always good to shake things up.

Tomorrow? I’ll be watching guys install new flooring into my house and trying to minimize the destruction to my belongings. I’ll get some daily quests done, maybe even work on some quests with my mage, or over on Moon Guard with the About Last Night group over there. Or I could say to hell with it all and hide in the bedroom with the two freaked out cats.

No pranks from me, but please feel free to check out the official WoW website for the annual silliness. A host of bloggers all have “questionable” blog posts, and I encourage everyone to go read them and enjoy.

I have -finally- gotten back to WoW and took my first rather, erm, whirlwind look at the Shattered Sun Offensive quests, along with the other new dailies. I can say that the new dailies look interesting and I’m sure I’d say the same about the SSO ones, except I don’t really remember them. I got dragged around at top speed, so all my impressions are of the quests are killing and mass destruction with npcs randomly handing gold and packages out. I’m hoping that I can get some quest time early in the mornings this weekend to really take them in.

Tonight, the guild goes back to raiding, after having a week off. It’s back to SSC and here’s hoping we kick much butt again. I did notice that the mana drain was a lot higher last night for me, as well as pulling aggro off my pet a lot faster than normal. :;sigh:: bloody changes.